A knitter in the prime of life who knits to network TV

January 10, 2007

A lot of new knitters think of scarves as beginners projects, but I think of them as necessities, practice pieces, and chances to “get to know” new yarns. When I look back over my 2006 knitting accomplishments, they don’t seem so grand. I made two baby sweaters at the start of 2006, using kits from Morehouse: the zebra jacket and the tiger eye sweater. If I don’t have a baby handy to measure, I find using a kit helps. Plus I do like to finish these before the baby is ready for college, and the kit gets me over the designing stage. Since blogging wasn't even on my mind then, I don't have my own photos of these sweaters.

At the same time I bought the baby sweater kits, I also ordered this scarf pattern so I could see how Morehouse’s lighter-weight merino felt.

I bought the quilted jacket at the end of 2005, along with two pairs of bright leather gloves. This is a departure from my usual emphasis on neutrals, navy, and brown, and I really needed matching scarves. On a trip to WEBS, I bought some Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk DK. The red scarf is done; the orange will be done in a couple of days. I love how the red one turned out. The pattern is from Scarf Style (the feather and fan scarf). I think the yarn would be challenging to measure for a sweater because it stretches, but it makes a truly luxurious scarf.

The small Flower Basket scarf was a practice piece, since I hadn’t knit shawls for a while. I also switch from my customary combined knitting to continental knitting for large lace pieces, and it takes a while to remember how to purl and to get the stitches to be even. I’m not sure how you other combined knitters do it, but the instructions for Ktog stitches boggle my mind enough as it is without having to convert them to account for the twist of the stitches in combined knitting. In this case, I can’t beat ‘em, so I joined ‘em.

This year at the Brooks Farm booth in Rhinebeck, there were some very affordable skeins of a yarn called Acera—a show special. The yarn is a silk-vicose-wool mix, and I used it to try out a Myrna Stahman seamen’s scarf pattern. The pattern requires a provisional cast on, which was the first time I tried this (successfully). I bought two skeins thinking that I’d do a different pattern with the second, but when I started a pattern without the center Ktog’s, it seemed to stretch too much. To finish the scarves quickly, I made two of the same. One is blocked and given away; the other is not blocked, and will be someone’s present for Christmas 2007.

But I did learn a lot from the pattern, and that will help me decide which shawl pattern to use for some heavenly Cascade Silk from Tess Designer Yarns. I bought it at Maryland this past spring, and I think it will need a repetitive pattern that pulls the design in and gives it some texture. So later in the year, I hope to post my progress on it.

There are other yarns I’ve earmarked for scarves—some from Knitpicks (Elegance--a new yarn for me), some from Rhodie Hill Farm (llama yarn purchased at Rhinebeck two years ago), and some from Botanical Shades. Once I get to know these yarns, I’ll have a better feel for the kinds of garments they might make.

December 27, 2006

It is hard to know where to go with this next post. Should I share personal details, my experience knitting, or pictures of finished projects? This post is a compromise—and it is keeping me from cramming everything I've learned about knitting since I was 13 years old into one paragraph.

Although I didn’t get along terribly well with my mother, we did share one wonderful day in Paris. In about 1978, when I was on pretty good terms with her, we went to Paris for a few weeks. At that time, it was very hard to get nice yarn in beautiful colors in the U.S. One day we found ourselves at the department store Au Printemps, and I could read enough French to figure out that there was a knitting department on one of the upper floors. The elevator doors opened on a huge selling floor with bins of fantastic yarn—nothing at all like the few dinky counters of worsted and sport yarn in Macy’s, Altman’s, or other New York department stores. After what seemed like hours going through the yarn, we came across some beautiful fine merino wool in colors that seemed amazing. This is what we bought:

A few years before she died, my mother gave me the yarn she bought that day, and I no longer really know which of us got specific colors. When we got home from Paris, I made this sweater from my own design.

But I had quite a lot of yarn left, and I didn’t want to make another sweater like that one. (That one took me six months of knitting, while doing a lot of traveling for work. I knit it on size 2 1/2 mm Milward needles.) After seeing the beautiful shawls so many bloggers were displaying, I wondered how far just one of those Chat Botte balls would go. There are 345 yards in each. So the first experiment I did was this scarf-sized version of Flower Basket (by Evelyn Clark), using size 4 metric, Aero circular needles. It has one tiny mistake that is very hard to find, and I figured that was insignificant enough to make it suitable for a casual gift.

I then thought I’d see how big a shawl I’d get from two balls, and I was very pleased with the result. Here is the shawl (also Flower Basket) that I knit in November for my cousin, Maxine. We just visited the Tiffany exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before heading into Central Park for this photo shoot(!).

So on tap for this year is another in the rose color for me.

I kind of hope that I won’t always have the Paris yarn, but it will take a long time to knit it all up.